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Emma was at her vanity when Logan shuffled inside, flinging his body down on the low white couch that dominated her sitting room. Emma pursed her lips as she wiped lipstick from her mouth and said, “If you got blood on that, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“No blood, gorgeous,” Logan rumbled. Emma rubbed more vigorously at her mouth to disguise the involuntary smile that crept over her face when Logan called her gorgeous; she was a woman of fifty-six, and it hadn’t even done to blush like a virgin at Logan’s endearments, which he threw out like Halloween candy, when this thing between them had been as new and fragile as a budding pink rose. “Picketers backed right down. Didn’t even have to get the claws out.”
“Well, good,” Emma said, though she knew that Logan would have preferred a brawl. She picked up a reusable cotton velvet round and began to wipe at the foundation on her face. As she’d aged, as wrinkles had started to appear around the corners of her mouth and eyes, lines eventually deepening on her forehead and chin, she’d stopped trying to get the makeup to cover what it was never going to cover. Now, she wore light layers, to accent her eyeshadow or lipstick, and didn’t worry too much about looking her age. “Maybe when I meet Charles for tea tomorrow I won’t get a sympathetic headache.”
“I wouldn’t mind helpin’ you work out all your aches and pains,” Logan purred. Emma rolled her eyes at the bluntness of that line. Twenty years hadn’t worked out Logan’s flirtatiousness. She wondered if maybe another twenty years would do it, then reflected that she’d miss it, in spite of herself.
Emma stood, brushing the front of her bathrobe off, and slunk over to where Logan was sprawled on the couch. He smiled up at her fondly and opened his arms for her to insinuate herself into them. She slung her feet up into his lap and sighed with pleasure as he began to massage her feet, the perfect amount of pressure sinking into her arches and heels. “You’re wasted in security on that school, you know,” she said, one hand draped over her eyes. “You could be a masseuse. Or my kept boy.”
Logan growled playfully, the way he always did when she brought up—teasingly or not—the prospect of him retiring into a life of luxury paid for by Emma. “Too old to be kept by anyone,” he said. He worked a thumb into the arch of her foot, and she sighed beatifically. “You’ll understand one day, kid.”
Emma smiled a private smile. It was sweet, how Logan insisted on treating her like she was still in the sparkling bud of youth. Logan was a good handful of years older than her, but the older she got, the more that difference seemed to fade into nothing. Emma ran a soft, petting hand down Logan’s flank, relishing the softness that he had taken on over his hard muscle, a luxury he hadn’t allowed himself when he was still working itinerant temporary jobs like truck driving and club bouncing. Logan hadn’t changed much over the decades; his hair was still thick and dark, his eyes still gleamed with timeless experience. It was this weight, more than anything else, which spoke of the influence Emma had had on him.
She shifted, and a hard weight in Logan’s pocket digging into her hip made her grimace. “Are you happy to see me?” she teased.
But Logan suddenly looked very nervous. He dropped the foot he was massaging and stood; Emma thought about refusing to lift her legs and keeping him barred in, but after only a little tussle she let him go. Logan ran a hand through his hair, made to sit down again, and ended up in a half-crouched pose that looked almost as awkward as it must have felt. Emma, who had learned a long time ago that men panicking paradoxically made her feel calmer, crossed her ankles and propped up her feet on the sofa arm. “I know that look,” she said, a hint of amusement curling her mouth up. It was lovely, she reflected, being so secure in a relationship that her man acting like a skittish mouse wasn’t enough to arouse her killing instinct. She felt utterly content with waiting until Logan tripped up on his own tongue and whatever he was hiding came tripping out of his mouth. “The last time I saw it my VP of Sales was trying to figure out a way to tell me he’d lost six months of sales records.”
Logan grimaced—he obviously remembered the many, many times he’d had to talk her down from going to murder the incompetent bastard—and settled himself on the edge of the couch gingerly. His hand fluttered to his pocket, where he rubbed over the hard lump there. “Now, I want you to promise me you won’t get mad,” he started.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Already I find irritation simmering,” she said. “Spit it out.”
Logan looked at her. His dark, honest eyes studied her, and then his brows relaxed into something resembling confidence. He slipped down from the couch to kneel, brushing a kiss against her bare knee where it peeked out from the folds of her dressing gown, and reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box.
Emma sat bolt upright. Whatever she had been expecting, it was not this.
“Emma Frost,” Logan said, and opened the ring box so that a small but clearly genuine diamond ring could twinkle out at her from its velvet folds, “will you do something completely stupid with me?”
Emma, not breathing, still managed to get out, “Oh, my.” Not because the diamond was particularly extravagant—in fact, it was probably the least impressive diamond she’d ever seen, and that was proof that Logan had bought this for her with the finances he’d scrupulously kept separate from her riches for decades—but because until this moment, with Logan kneeling at her feet like something out of a fairy-tale, she had never realized how much the dreams of little girls had infected her childhood, how much her hindbrain had longed for something like this all throughout the decades when she’d thought she couldn’t get any happier than she was with Logan by her side. She didn’t reach to take it, in case the illusion might fracture under her fingers. “What… what brought this on?”
Logan licked his lips. “I could say a lotta stuff. My new gig at the school finally pays enough for me to invest in a ring, even though…” he glanced down. “I know it’s not… not what you’re used to.” Emma reached out to reassure him—she’d never thought a diamond about half a carat in size would wrench her heart away from her like this one did—“And at the protest today, this pair of students got engaged—helluva place to propose, but—but really—I just woke up this morning, and you were so beautiful, and I knew I had to keep you by my side for the rest of our lives.” He took a deep breath to punctuate this uncharacteristically unsteady speech. Emma felt light-headed. She’d never seen Logan so unsure, Logan who had taken everything Emma could throw at him, from her transness to her involvement in mutant separatism, in easy stride, Logan who knew, who had to know, that Emma wanted nothing more than to wake up in his arms every day until death did one of them part. “Emma… Emma.” Her name on his lips felt like honey spilling from his mouth. “Emma, honey, don’t leave me hanging.”
“You idiot,” Emma said, and horror washed through her as she felt Logan’s mind crumple a little in despair. “That’s not what I meant.” She took up the ring, and slid it on her finger—her bare left ring finger, on which she never wore a ring, though she’d been fairly dripping in diamonds since she’d taken over the helm of Frost International. “I meant yes. Logan, yes.”
Logan’s expression cleared like dew melting away, like a diamond catching the light just right and throwing refracted happiness on the wall. She held out her hand to him, and he took it, but didn’t kiss it; instead, he stared, dazzled, at the play of the diamond against her pale skin. “Radiant,” he said, and glanced at her face, and Emma realized that she was smiling, a silly, helpless grin. “Beautiful. Mine.”
“Yours,” Emma agreed, and brought up his knuckles to her lips to press a kiss there—if he wouldn’t, she would. “Mine.”
Logan beamed, and Emma, at fifty-six years old, let her pessimism fall away for a moment to dream of weddings, and honeymoons, and forevers.